In this article, we examine the relationship between racial resentment and a host of political attitudes, predispositions, and behaviors across 28 years and 7 presidential elections. We find, contrary to the suggestions of recent work of the role of race in the Obama era, that the racialization of seemingly nonracial political issues began many years before the debut of Barack Obama and extends beyond his presidency. More specifically, we find, controlling for other factors, that the relationships between racial resentment and partisan and ideological self-identifications, evaluations of the major party presidential candidates, and attitudes about health insurance and governmental services have strengthened each subsequent year beginning in 1988 through 2016. This trend reflects the growing extent to which racial considerations are brought to bear on individual evaluations of and orientations toward the political world.
AlvarezR. M.BrehmJ. (1997). Are Americans ambivalent towards racial policies?American Journal of Political Science, 41, 345–374.
2.
BoboL. (1999). Race and beliefs about affirmative action: Assessing the effects of interests, group threat, ideology, and racism. In SearsD.O.SidaniusJ.BoboL. (Eds.), Racialized politics: The debate about racism in America (pp. 137-164). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
3.
CampbellA.ConverseP. E.MillerW. E.Donald StokesE. (1960). The American voter. New York, NY: John Wiley.
4.
CarminesE.G.StimsonJ.A. (1989). Issue evolution: Race and the transformation of American politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
5.
DonovanT. (2010). Obama and the White vote. Political Research Quarterly, 63, 863–874.
6.
EdsallT. B.EdsallM. D. (1992). Chain reaction: The impact of race, rights, and taxes on American politics. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
7.
EllisC.StimsonJ. (2012). Ideology in America. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
8.
FeldmanS. (2003). Values, ideology, and the structure of political attitudes. In SearsD. O.HuddyL.JervisR. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political psychology (pp. 477-508). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
9.
Garćıa BedollaL.HaynieK. L. (2013). The Obama coalition and the future of American politics. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 1, 128–133.
10.
GilensM. (1996). “Race coding” and White opposition to welfare. American Political Science Review, 90, 593–604.
11.
GilensM. (1998). Racial attitudes and race-neutral social policies: White opposition to welfare and the politics of racial inequality. In HurwitzJ.PeffleyM. (Eds.), Perception and prejudice: Race and politics in the United States (pp. 171-201). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
12.
GilensM. (1999). Why Americans hate welfare: Race, media, and the politics of antipoverty policy. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
13.
GreenD.PalmquistB.SchicklerE. (2002). Partisan hearts and minds. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
14.
HainmuellerJ.MummoloJ.XuY. (2016). How much should we trust estimates from multiplicative interaction models? Simple tools to improve empirical practice (Working paper).
15.
HetheringtonM. J.WeilerJ. (2009). Authoritarianism and polarization in American politics. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
16.
HuberJ. D.LapinskiJ. (2006). The “race card” revisited: Assessing racial priming in policy contests. American Journal of Political Science, 50, 421–440.
17.
HuddyL.FeldmanS. (2009). On assessing the political effects of racial prejudice. Annual Review of Political Science, 12, 423–447.
18.
HurwitzJ.PeffleyM. (2005). Playing the race card in the post-Willie Horton era: The impact of racialized code words on support for punitive crime policy. Public Opinion Quarterly, 69, 99–112.
19.
HutchingsV. L. (2009). Change or more of the same? Evaluating racial attitudes in the Obama era. Public Opinion Quarterly, 73, 917–942.
20.
JacobyW. G. (2000). Issue framing and public opinion on government spending. American Journal of Political Science, 44, 750–767.
21.
JamiesonH. K. (1993). Dirty politics: Deception, distraction, and democracy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
22.
KamC. D.KinderD. R. (2012). Ethnocentrism as a short-term force in the 2008 American presidential election. American Journal of Political Science, 56, 326–340.
KellstedtP. M. (2003). The mass media and the dynamics of American racial attitudes. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
25.
KinderD. R.Dale-RiddleA. (2011). The end of race?New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
26.
KinderD. R.SandersL. M. (1996). Divided by color: Racial politics and democratic ideals. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
27.
KinderD. R.WinterN. J. G. (2001). Exploring the racial divide: Blacks, Whites, and opinion on national policy. American Journal of Political Science, 45, 439–456.
28.
KrupnikovY.PistonS. (2015). Racial prejudice, partisanship, and White turnout in elections with Black candidates. Political Behavior, 37, 397–418.
29.
KrysanM. (2000). Prejudice, politics, and public opinion: Understanding the sources of racial policy attitudes. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 135–168.
30.
LaymanG. C.CarseyT. M. (2002). Party polarization and party structuring of policy attitudes: A comparison of three NES panel studies. Political Behavior, 24, 199–236.
31.
LaymanG. C.CarseyT. M.GreenJ. C.HerreraR.CoopermanR. (2010). Activists and conflict extension in American party politics. American Political Science Review, 104, 324–346.
32.
Lewis-BeckM. S.TienC.NadeauR. (2010). Obama’s missed landslide: A racial cost?PS: Political Science & Politics, 43, 69–76.
33.
MendelbergT. (1997). Executing Hortons: Racial crime in the 1988 presidential campaign. Public Opinion Quarterly, 61, 134–157.
34.
MendelbergT. (2001). The race card: Campaign strategy, implicit messages, and the norm of equality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
35.
NebloM. A. (2009). Three-fifths a racist: A typology for analyzing public opinion about race. Political Behavior, 31, 31–51.
36.
NelsonT. E.OxleyZ. M.ClawsonR. A. (1997). Toward a psychology of framing effects. Political Behavior, 19, 221–246.
37.
PantojaA. D.RamirezR.SeguraG. M. (2001). Citizens by choice, voters by necessity: Patterns in political mobilization by naturalized Latinos. Political Research Quarterly, 54, 729–750.
38.
PetrowG. A. (2010). The minimal cue hypothesis: How Black candidates cue race to increase White voting participation. Political Psychology, 31, 915–950.
39.
PistonS. (2010). How explicit racial prejudice hurt Obama in the 2008 election. Political Behavior, 32, 431–451.
40.
RabinowitzJ. L.SearsD. O.SidaniusJ.KrosnickJ. A. (2009). Why do White Americans oppose race-targeted policies? Clarifying the impact of symbolic racism. Political Psychology, 30, 805–828.
41.
SchaffnerB. F. (2011). Racial salience and the Obama vote. Political Psychology, 32, 963–988.
42.
SearsD. O.SidaniusJ.BoboL. (2000). Racialized politics: Values, ideology, and prejudice in American public opinion. Chicago, IL: The Chicago University Press.
43.
SidesJ.TeslerM.VavreckL. (2016). The electoral landscape of 2016. ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 667, 50–71.
44.
SnidermanP. M.CarminesE. G. (1997). Reaching beyond race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
45.
SnidermanP. M.PiazzaT. (1997). The scar of race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
46.
Stephens-DouganL. (2016). Priming racial resentment without stereotypic cues. Journal of Politics, 78, 687–704.
47.
TarmanC.SearsD. O. (2005). The conceptualization and measurement of symbolic racism. Journal of Politics, 67, 731–761.
48.
TeslerM. (2012). The spillover of racialization into health care: How president Obama polarized public opinion by racial attitudes and race. American Journal of Political Science, 56, 690–704.
49.
TeslerM. (2013). The return of old fashioned racism to White Americans’ partisan preferences in the early Obama era. Journal of Politics, 75, 110–123.
50.
TeslerM. (2015). The conditions ripe for racial spillover effects. Advances in Political Psychology, 36, 101–117.
51.
TeslerM. (2016). Post-racial or most-racial? Race and politics in the Obama era. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
52.
TeslerM.SearsD. O. (2010). Obama’s race: The 2008 election and the dream of a post-racial America. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
53.
ValentinoN. A. (1999). Crime news and the priming of racial attitudes during evaluations of the president. Public Opinion Quarterly, 63, 293–320.
54.
ValentinoN. A.HutchingsV. L.WhiteI. K. (2002). Cues that matter: How political ads prime racial attitudes during campaigns. American Political Science Review, 96, 75–90.
55.
ValentinoN. A.SearsD. O. (2005). Old times are not forgotten: Race and partisan realignment in the contemporary south. American Journal of Political Science, 49, 672–688.
56.
WeisbergH. F.DevineC. J. (2010). Racial attitude effects on voting in the 2008 presidential election: Examining the unconventional factors shaping vote choice in a most unconventional election. Electoral Studies, 29, 569–581.
57.
WhiteI. K. (2007). When race matters and when it doesn’t: Racial group differences in response to racial cues. American Political Science Review, 101, 339–354.
58.
WinterN. J. G. (2008). Dangerous frames: How ideas about race and gender shape public opinion. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
